Ritual and Reality

“All evidence points to the hypothesis that human beings cannot go on existing in a state of slavery to unconscious impulses and habits, relieved by only brief intervals of consciousness.”

The above quote comes from a book called “Collected Writings on the Alexander Technique” by Frank Pierce Jones, edited by Theodore Dimon and Richard Brown (a must read for all those who are serious in their desire to gain a better understanding of the great discoveries and work of F.M. Alexander).

Jones was responding to a letter by Leo Stein in The American Scholar in order to gain favorable publicity for his work as an Alexander Technique Teacher in Boston around 1945.

As we enter 2010 I see that nothing has changed! The old paradigm holds tightly onto the minds of humanity. Blindly we continue with our rituals.

The New Year’s ritual begins: We promise ourselves and others that we will change. This year is going to be different. We will stop doing the wrong thing. We promise that we will behave in a manner that will STOP hurting ourselves, others and the world around us.

The reality ends; our promises fall by the wayside. Intolerance, depression, anxiety, disappointment, fear, resentment, despair, backaches, headaches, pain and suffering crowd in upon us with relentless vigor. Our negative habits of thought and body weigh us down inch by inch. We are full of tension teetering on the break of disaster. Our postures never lie; they reveal the internecine war that wages within. We become more and more buckled and bent, twisting further into our rigidities, faults and short-comings. We despise ourselves and others for we have failed to gain the necessary control over those vicious psycho/physical habits yet again. Or, we have duped ourselves into finding a “cure” by transferring the problem somewhere else for the time being. Our slavery to unconscious impulses and our old habits reign supreme.

Einstein defined insanity as “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Such illumination is gratefully received.
Einstein gave us the necessary insight into our madness; however he did not give us the way out.

F.M. Alexander (1869–1955) did find the way out of our individual and collective insanity which we have now come to affectionately call the “human condition”! Einstein is a household name yet who is Alexander to the many in their households? Alexander - the greatest genius of the 20th Century - remains unknown to the vast majority of people around the world. Those who are promoting his work have hijacked it for their own desires and advantage or they have got the wrong idea expounding misinformation!

Take a moment to check your concept of Alexander’s work. He defined his work as follows:

“You are not here to do exercises, or to learn to do something right, but to get able to meet a stimulus that always puts you wrong and to learn to deal with it!”

“You come to learn to inhibit and to direct your activity. You learn, first, to inhibit the habitual reaction to certain classes of stimuli, and second, to direct yourself consciously in such a way as to affect certain muscular pulls, which processes bring about a new reaction to these stimuli. Boiled down, it all comes to inhibiting a particular reaction to a given stimulus. But no one will see it that way. They will all see it as getting in and out of a chair the right way. It is nothing of the kind. It is that a pupil decides what he will or will not consent to do. They may teach you anatomy and physiology till they are black in the face – you will still have this to face, sticking to a decision against your habit of life.”

The above quote is taken from Alexander’s teaching aphorisms obtainable through Mouritz publishing. www.mouritz.org

So who is this Alexander? What is this Alexander Technique? How can it help us into a saner life style?

From the day I had my first lesson to my graduation as an AT teacher to my evolution as an AT iPAC teacher I have been consumed with promoting his great discoveries and testing them in my personal life and in my professional life. I know it works! It is the most powerful discovery of our time. After 30 years of pioneering work I am still a needle in a haystack.
Back to Frank Pierce Jones for some inspiration:

“It is consciousness, as Mr Stein observes, that distinguishes man from the other animals, and it is his refusal to live a fully conscious life that keeps him in his present unhappy condition.”

As a first generation teacher Frank Pierce Jones was trying to draw people’s attention to:

“An educational technique that makes it possible for anyone to bring a greater degree of conscious direction into all of his behaviour, and to break with what Edith Wharton once called “the habit of having habits.”

As an intellectual (with excellent credentials) Jones took great pains to verify Alexander’s technique for himself and others. He was not alone; John Dewey too saw how important Alexander’s discoveries were for the advancement and betterment of humanity. Dewey in his Introduction to Alexander’s book “The Use of the Self” put the significance of Alexander’s work like this:

“It bears the same relation to education that education itself bears to all other human activities.”

Jones’ ponders (and so do I) why intellectuals have not picked up on this exciting new discovery. He says: “I have often wondered why it has not had a wider appeal among intellectuals, most of whom claim to be interested in the betterment of the world.”

He answers himself (and I agree): “The answer must be, as Mr. Stein suggests, that the intellectual is not willing to accept a power that entails real responsibility, but prefers to remain in his present condition as long as he can lay the blame outside himself – on his heredity, on chemistry, his childhood experiences, his upright posture, or whatever scapegoat is currently fashionable.”

2010 moves on; the story of our evolution and our struggle for survival continues to its unknown conclusion. I reflect upon the fact that my personal journey to survive and flourish is intrinsically linked to the survival and flowering of the human race.


As a third generation teacher (with over thirty years of personal and professional experience) I no longer look to scientists or intellectuals or to religion or religious leader for the solution to our problems for it is not a mass issue but an individual one. I look to the great work of Alexander and to those individual teachers who are dedicated to bringing Alexander’s work (intact not compromised to suit the present paradigm with its vested interests) into the mainstream. I look to the changes being brought about from the grassroots up.

I look to those intelligent, curious and courageous individuals who have linked up their observations using their reason and have found the old paradigm and its methods seriously lacking. Thankfully, they are sufficiently advanced in their individuality to stand back from their herd instinct and are ready to advance themselves by taking responsibility for their actions, their ills, and their shortcomings.

Every year I too go through my New Year’s ritual: I refresh my commitment to continue to dedicate my life to helping those individuals who are ready to make a paradigm shift: to move from a passive, disempowered, patient/cure model for health and well-being to an active, empowered, student/learning/educational model for health and well-being.

I re-read the quote by Herbert Spencer in Alexander’s book Man’s Supreme Inheritance to remind me of my responsibility. It is crystal clear.

“Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it be too much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view… It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of his time. He must remember that while he is a descendant of the past he is a parent of the future; and that his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly let die.”

Happy New Year! Please visit us again or take a moment to read some of our testimonials. We appreciate that testimonials are not proof, but they do offer a pointer to the existence of new knowledge which might be used for human betterment starting with you.


-Tasha Miller